Political Quotes

“I am here today to speak in support of the Water Resources Development Act, or what we call WRDA. I thank Chairman Inhofe and Ranking Member Boxer for the way they have worked very well together to get this very important piece of legislation across the finish line, as they did with the Transportation bill. This piece of legislation has broad bipartisan support. As we know, West Virginia suffered historic flooding this summer. We can see this in Greenbrier County, WV, on June 25, 2016. This shows how swollen and filled all the waterways were. We lost 23 West Virginians from the storms, and tens of thousands suffered catastrophic damages to their homes and to their livelihoods. WRDA contains a number of provisions that will help prevent this kind of devastation in the future. We can no longer wait until it fails to fix our Nation's infrastructure. In addition to a major loss of life, communities across West Virginia are dealing with significant economic losses that will take years to recover. Our friends in Louisiana are going through the same, very difficult building back. Let me touch on some of the highlights of the WRDA bill. I sponsored a provision in WRDA with my fellow Senator from West Virginia, Mr. Manchin, to study the feasibility of implementing projects for flood risk management within West Virginia's Kanawha River Basin--something such as this--to prevent this.…”